In Vino, Veritas
by auditoryeden
Summary: Sometimes, the staff worries about the Two Bartletts. It's a toss up, and reelection could depend on who shows up for the debate, the Professor, or Uncle Fluffy. The Professor doesn't make it, and their lives all change course.


"Alright...just in now... we're ready to call the election!"

The whole White House seems to be holding its breath as the pasty, tired-looking anchor listens to his earpiece. "Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States will be Robert Ritchie!" The anchor's tight, unnaturally white grin rings with the insincerity of any retail employee at the end of their eight hour shift. As the hour rolls and he's able to surrender the desk, you can just about smell his relief through the screen.

You could hear a pin drop anywhere in the White House.

No assistants speak, or even twitch. No senior staff breathes.

They're done.

No matter what they do in these last few weeks, it's not likely to signify, because as of this moment they are to a man a lame-duck administration.

* * *

"I just...I can't believe it," Donna says, staring up at Josh's ceiling, sprawled over his couch and with a bottle of his beer in her hand. "Even after the debate, I still thought we'd win."

"Yeah," Josh agrees, sounding mostly sad and resigned. He'd been oddly silent for the first few hours after the election had been called, then angry and bitter through an entire workday, and when he'd closed his office door at the stunningly early hour of seven PM, held out Donna's coat for her, and strode purposefully out of the building, she'd followed.

The detritus of their Thai takeout litters the coffee table and the floor, and Josh has lined up their collective five empty bottles on the edge of his desk. It's a scene of defeat and mourning, no matter how closely it resembles their victory party of four years prior. Ritchie's taking the White House, their White House, despite the fact that the man has neither ideas nor a true capacity for leadership. The President-Elect is, Josh says, a hairstyle, and he's managed to defeat Josiah Bartlett to become the leader of the free world.

There's not enough beer in the whole continental United States to make that okay.

The vaguely miserable, contempletive silence stretches for a long while. Donna amuses herself by poking her big toe into his thigh over and over, and though he covers her foot with an absent-minded hand Josh does nothing to react or stop her.

"Donna," Josh says, softly.

"Yeah?"

"Donnatella Moss," he pronounces, carefully. His thumb glides slowly up the arch of her foot, tracing it.

"That's my name," she agrees, affable through the gentling fog of beer.

"Marry me."

She sits up very quickly, reeling a little as the world spins. Josh blinks at her from his position at the end of the couch. "What now?"

"You don't have to," he disclaims hurriedly. "It's a request. I'm asking."

"I know I don't _have_ to," she points out fiercely. "Why the hell are you—did you really just—"

"Donnatella," he says again, and _holy lord_ , he's moving closer, he's holding her hands and looking her earnestly in the face. "I'm asking you to marry me. Give it some thought, okay?"

" _Why is this a thing you're saying?_ " she demands, full volume and rising in pitch to a shrill whine.

Josh blinks at her once, looking faintly stunned, looks away, looks back. "Why am I asking you to marry me?" he clarifies, slowly. She nods. "Oh," he says, a relieved sort of smile breaking over his face. "That's easy. Cause I'm in love with you."

In the morning he will wake up and wonder, briefly, why his head feels like it's sloshing on his shoulders, why his mouth tastes of decay and garlic, and then he will remember that they lost. And then, he will remember this, remember telling a woman, without hesitation or trepidation for the first time in his life, that he loves her. He will be appalled, he will detest himself and beg forgiveness from the kind angel that tames his coffee maker and laughs at his groveling.

He will not take it back.

Donna stares at his happy, open, tender expression, and attempts to marshal a coherent or appropriate response to the twin declarations he's dropped on her like an ACME piano.

Love. Marriage.

There's a small part of her brain—the part, if she's being perfectly honest, that has kept her out of Josh's bed for five years—that knows that it's swimming in alcohol, knows that Josh is worse off still, knows that he's almost definitely not serious and, even if he was, is in no shape to be consenting to any kind of phase change in their relationship.

That small part tells her to laugh him off, tuck him into bed now, and send him off to sleep with a platonic, if perhaps indulgently lingering, kiss on the forehead.

That small part is not counting on the overwhelming degree of panic and surprise enjoyed by the majority of the constituents of Donna Moss' brain, and it's not even slightly prepared to take on the diverse and frenzied neurotransmitters of a woman in love.

"Oh," she says, blankly. "Okay."

"So you'll think about it?" he presses, giving her the puppy dog eyes that never fail to shake her resolve.

"We're not dating," she points out, scrambling to locate justification for the little voice screaming that this is a bad idea. The little voice is insistent and hysterical, but the more she thinks about it, the better it looks. Josh loves her; she loves Josh; he's already proven malleable to domestic training; she already knows where he hides his stash of junk food; she wants to spend every day with him; they've already worked out how they celebrate the winter holidays; they've already shared a bed; his mother already adores her; her mother thinks he's Democrat scum but given Ma Moss' views on everything from taxes to women's suffrage her approval would actually count against any potential husband. There's not much for the little voice to scream about, as far as Donna can tell, but as a benevolent dictator she blearily tries to assuage its fears.

"We've done everything normal couples do except the sex," Josh counters, belligerent.

This, it must be acknowledged, is pretty much true, from house-hunting to the dreaded IKEA milestone, even including several months of living together, both during the campaign and in the aftermath of the shooting. The reasonableness of his argument throws Donna momentarily, before she finds her footing again. "The sex thing. I'm not marrying someone I've never had sex with. What if it's awful?"

"It's not." He speaks with total authority, as though he's personally tested it, but the thing is, she's pretty sure it couldn't be awful with Josh; they've got such a magnetism between them, an attraction they've both silently acknowledged for years, and he's so tactile and curious and yet has such a capacity for focus and dedication. To the be the subject of that focus could not possibly be less than exhilarating.

She's so busy staring into his (wonderful, warm, comfortingly not-blue) eyes and imagining having sex with him, she almost doesn't notice the errant thought that forms the foundation of the little voice's fortress. "Joshua," she hails him, snapping her fingers in front of his nose and savoring his little twitch. "You can't marry me; I'm your secretary."

"You are not," he scoffs. "You do research and bully me and bully Congressmen and bully the President—"

"I do not bully the President, Josh—!"

"—and you run a whole herd of kids in the office and remember all their names. You're like, the Deputy-Deputy Chief of Staff."

The brief glow of validation is quickly quashed in favor of the argument. "Even if that was my job title, which it's not, you still couldn't marry me. It's against the rules."

"Screw the rules," Josh declares, getting that very intense look in his eye that usually means he's getting serious.

"Joshua—"

"Another thing," he cuts her off, "We've got like three months left in office. Three months when no one cares what we do anymore. Three months when everyone's gonna be so busy cleaning out their offices and updating their resumes that I bet no one notices we're together—"

"We're not—"

"And I don't know how it works for most people but three months seems like a good amount of time to be engaged to me."

It's hard to decide what's more stunning, that Josh has, despite two and a half beers and the crushing despair of defeat, reasoned all this out so very clearly, or the hot, laser-sharp expression of his eyes, set above a half-smiling mouth and dimpled cheeks.

"Josh," Donna repeats, out to sea, completely paralyzed by conflict.

"Wait here." He drops her hands, rolls off the couch and onto his feet with surprisingly little swaying, and pads away into the bowels of his apartment as Donna watches from her perch on the sofa. Maybe three minutes pass before he pads back into the room, over to her, and drops down in front of her, kneeling on both legs, gathering her hands into his again.

"What—?" she begins, but he hushes her, bends his head over their hands, and then something cool is being slid onto her left ring finger. He lifts her hand up to show her the result of his fiddling, and her heart stops.

It's clearly an antique, a modest garnet in a silver filigree setting, and it fits her finger comfortably, looks like it belongs there. "It was my grandmother's," he tells her, softly. "My father's mother. Donna..."

"You're actually serious," Donna realizes aloud.

"Yeah," he confirms, looks her dead in the eye. "Think about it."

It's that insistence, not on an answer but on consideration, that decides her. "No," she says, and then immediately, very quickly, but not quickly enough to forestall the vaguely crestfallen look, "I mean, no, I don't need to think about it. I love you, Josh."

He watches her with solemn eyes, still kneeling before her. "I'll marry you," she tells him, softly, and kisses him. He surges up under her hands, taking control of the kiss with more finesse and aplomb than she would ever have credited him. His hands are seemingly everywhere, carding through her hair and tracing her jaw, shifting her gently so he can lay her back and climb overtop of her, knees nudging hers apart as he settles between them. The weight of him presses her down but it makes her feel safe, not smothered.

"Holy God, Donna," he groans against her lips. "I love you so much."

* * *

Waking up hungover and snuggling on his couch should maybe be uncomfortable, awkward, but it isn't. Once upon a time it had been mildly embarrassing, but that had faded exponentially with each additional incident. Four years of drunken cuddling has inured them both to anything but the siren call of coffee.

"Dear god in heaven," Josh croaks, face buried in Donna's shoulder. She moans her agreement, shoves weakly at his arm. "Move," she tells him, urgently. Her tone tells him all he needs to know, and as soon as he's disentangled himself she's shuffling off to the bathroom at top speed, yawning vigorously.

When she returns, face freshly scrubbed but still pale and shadowed, he's poking at his coffee maker, trying once again to recall which button brews a fresh pot and which programs a delayed brew. Donna comes up behind him and smacks the correct switch, collapsing in short order at the kitchen table.

"M' dead, Josh," she moans. "Dead. This's a nightmare." She's still slurring her speech the way she does when she's not really awake, but her words jolt him awake with a nasty suddenness.

"A nightmare?" he repeats, and his stomach knots.

"Ritchie," Donna whines, and Josh finds himself caught between relief and hideous guilt.

The coffee maker beeps, the sound of salvation, and Josh fixes them both cups, plops her down in front of her, and sinks into his seat, ruminating.

"I'm not...gonna hold you to it," Josh grinds out, head in his hands. His mug of coffee is steaming under his face, the fumes serving to resurrect him partially, but he's still effectively a zombie.

"Hmm?" Donna cannot argue that she is substantially better off than he is in that department, but she is now at least ingesting her coffee, the better to flood her bloodstream with caffeine.

"You were even more wasted than I was," he says. "Not in your right mind or whatever. I didn't mean to take advantage."

"What are you talking about?" she manages to articulate, scrubbing a hand over her face. There's something on her finger, the band of a ring, and blearily she turns her palm out to investigate. "What is..."

"You don't remember," Josh concludes, peering sideways at her. "Fabulous."

"Josh, there's a ring on my finger," Donna reports, uncertain.

A slug of coffee gives him an opportunity to fettle himself. "Yeah, there is," he agrees. "It's an engagement ring. An heirloom, in fact."

"An heirloom engagement ring is on my finger," Donna says.

He gives her a sideways look, hunched over his mug, and repeats, "I'm not gonna hold you to it."

"Not..." She draws a deep, shuddering breath. "Joshua. Did you, in all seriousness, ask me to marry you last night?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Oh, my..." Huge blue eyes peered at him. "Really?"

"I'm detecting a pattern here, regarding your faith in my general sincerity," he jokes. "Yes, Donnatella Moss, I asked you to marry me."

"Oh my god," Donna says. "And I said yes?"

His expression shutters visibly, the only defense he has against his glass-faced tendencies. "You did," he confirms. "But like I said, I'm not—"

"Gonna hold me to it," she finishes. "Why not?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why aren't you going to hold me to it?" she demands, and he stares at her, uncomprehending.

"Because you were drunk," he tells her slowly, enunciating impeccably. "Same reason I wouldn't have had sex with you, or bought your apartment from you. You were too drunk to answer, clearly, since you don't even remember that I asked you."

"I'm not too drunk to answer now," she says, breathless, and he shrugs.

"Which is why it's your decision."

That's a loaded statement, and no denying it.

"Where would we live?" she asks.

"I don't know. Not your apartment, it's a thousand miles from anything."

"And it doesn't have central air," she points out, agreeably.

"Great minds," he nods.

"So, your apartment."

He shrugs. "Unless you want us to find a place together?"

"I like this place."

"Me, too."

"What are you going to do after January?" she wonders aloud.

Josh shrugs again. "I don't know. I've got some offers, you've seen `em all. You?"

"I don't know. I thought about going back to school."

"Georgetown?"

"Maybe? It's too late for spring admissions..."

"Know what you're gonna study?"

"No," she denies. "When were you thinking we'd...do it?"

"January 21st?" he suggests, flippantly. "Or whenever. As long as I end up with you."

"Are you gonna ask me?" she points out. "For real?"

"You want me to?"

Donna Moss is a hardened professional when it comes to glaring. The one she levels at him now is a premium specimen, and it speaks volumes. "Yes, Joshua, I would like to be able to tell our children someday that their father bothered to _ask_ me to marry him."

"For the record, I asked you, like, five times last night," he points out, and then he takes her hand, the left one, complete with ring.

There's a long moment of silence while she chews her lip and studies him, and he watches her intently. Then he swallows, just once, and very quietly he asks, "Donna Moss, for real this time, will you marry me?"

"You know," she replies, equally softly, "I think I will."

Her fingers are quivering in his as he raises them to his lips and kisses them, gently on the knuckles, the tips, and then on the ring. "How many kids are we talking, here?" he asks, in that tender, joking tone he uses. "Cause that might affect which offers I'm looking at."

"Oh, at least four," Donna tells him, totally strait-faced, and when the color drains out of his face and his smile drops away she begins to laugh, and laugh, until Josh, too, starts laughing, and it feels like they don't stop for hours.

* * *

The evening of President Ritchie's inauguration, Josh and Donna invite everyone to his apartment for what they call, "The Last Hurrah." CJ brings Danny, their first official date, Leo has Jordan with him, and the Doctors Bartlett are both in attendance, enjoying for the first time in four years a reduced security detail. Mrs Lyman flits around greeting old friends and distributing cookies. People bring chips and dip and beer, and when everyone is assembled in the living room, Josh calls them to order.

"This is kind of weird," he begins, and Donna jabs him in the ribs with her elbow. "Ow," he complains. "Fine, you tell them."

"This party is predicated on an excuse," Donna informs their friends. "Because we didn't really want to broadcast it, and we figure this is the last chance we'll have to be all together for a while."

"No way," Danny remarks, clearly cottoning on. "You're—sorry."

Donna's glare cuts him off, and as he subsides she grins at his repentance. "I think Danny get first prize," she declares. "But for anyone who's not taking home a Pulitzer, Josh and I are getting married, and we asked you guys to come because you're awesome and we love you."

"What she said," Josh agrees, looking faintly mortified, but mostly very smiley and tender. "And before everyone blames me for the general weirdness of this whole shindig, I'd like to say for the record that it was Donna's idea."

"Oh my god," CJ pronounces, and then everyone is piling forward, hugging and scolding and laughing because of course this is how Josh and Donna finally get together.

The President makes a big show of asking Donna earnestly if she's really thought this through, and then makes an equally large and embarrassing point of taking Josh aside to "tell him a few things." Leo smirks at everyone and claps Josh on the shoulder. Reveka Lyman bursts into tears and requires her son to hold her for several minutes while she weeps dramatically of her relief in his finally having found a good woman.

Donna mostly watches this and giggles, because about thirty seconds into her monologue Mrs Lyman peeks over Josh's shoulder and winks at her, and then sends up a piteous wail on the subject of grandchildren.

It's some while before their friends have giggled and questioned and generally bothered themselves out, and then there's another short wait for the officiant to arrive, but then they're standing in front of the people they love, and speaking their vows.

"I take you, Joshua, to be my husband from this day forward, to join with you and share all that is to come, and I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us." Donna says the words carefully, going slowly to ensure she doesn't stumble, but Josh flashes a charming smile and repeats after her quickly, and then he's fishing the box with their rings out of his pocket.

When they'd talked about the wedding itself, they'd decided to go mostly secular, except for using the vows of Donna's Lutheran upbringing, but for the exchange of rings Josh had been adamant. Donna slides his ring on his finger to the words, "With this ring, I thee wed," but as he lifts her right hand he tells her, softly, "Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring, according to the laws of Moses and Israel."

Mrs Lyman begins crying again, this time for real, muffling her sobs with a handkerchief pressed to her mouth, but Donna barely notices, too busy being transfixed by Josh's direct, focused gaze.

The officiant pronounces them _husband_ and wife, something Josh had been adamant about, to Donna's bemusement, and then they're kissing, a slow, sweet, poignant embrace.

This year has brought the end of an era, is scattering their family to all corners of the globe, but they're also all starting out on a new path, making new things and new lives. Josh has accepted a position in the DCCC, Donna is preparing her application for Georgetown, Toby is going to be a father, CJ and Danny are finally going to embark on the torrid love affair they've been flirting with for years. The President, God willing, is going to get sleep and spend time with his children, and maybe write a few more papers on the economic consequences of tax cuts for the wealthy.

They're not going to be together, anymore, but what they're going to be, is happy.

Donna presses a final, chaste peck to Josh's lips and draws back, smiling, to look him in the eye.

They're going to be happy.


End file.
